On Wednesday, January 6, 2021 the Ministry of Human Development, Families and Indigenous Peoples’ Affairs, announced that it has opened an application process for a redesigned Food Assistance Program. As expected under this present government, it took two releases to get the message across. The first release was posted on the Government Press Office’s Facebook page at 9:20 a.m. and it was taken down about 15 minutes later. Then at 10:50 a.m. another release was posted on the same Facebook page to announce the starting of the program. According to both releases, the COVID-19 Food Assistance Program and the Grocery Bag Program (formerly known as Pantry) have now been merged into one program entitled Food Assistance Program. The release went on to say that clients on any of the aforementioned programs SHOULD APPLY for the new Food Assistance Program designed to assist vulnerable households.
According to the release the target population is the very needy and most vulnerable households in the country. The release stated that priority will be given to the following:
1. Households where no one is working
2. Households which are not receiving assistance through BOOST or BCCAT
3. Households which are not receiving a pension
4. Single-parent families
5. Families with children, elderly and differently abled individuals.
Both releases went on to state that applications will be accepted from Wednesday, January 6, 2021 to Monday, January 18, 2021, and those applications would be evaluated for eligibility by assessment teams at the Ministry and the first set of approved beneficiaries will be receiving food assistance the week ending January 22, 2021. The releases give the two ways that applications could be submitted. The need for a new application has effectively eliminated all those tens of thousands of persons, who were on the COVID-19 Food Assistance Program and the Grocery Bag Program (formerly known as Pantry). It is highly suspected that all those persons will be deemed as UDP supporters and their applications will be rejected. Those persons will suffer a similar fate as those former employees of the government of Belize, who are now being fired just because they were hired while the UDP was in government. THE PUP IS NOW STOOPING TO PLAY POLITICS WITH FOOD FOR POOR PEOPLE.
